How do the pictures relate to the words in children’s books? Do they clarify the text? Do they complete it? Or do they do something else, such as moving the text forward?

Canadian scholar Perry Nodelman explores these and other questions in Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books (University of Georgia Press, $22.95, paperback) www.ugapress.uga.edu, perhaps the best book in print on how pictures relate to stories in children’s books. Nodelman deals at least in passing with hundreds of well-known picture books. But he pays special attention to 14 that have helped to define the field, including Beatrix Potter’s TheTale of Peter Rabbit, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Arewww.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/, Peter Spier’s Noah’s Arkwww.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/, Chris Van Allsburg’s The Garden of Abdul Gasaziwww.chrisvanallsburg.com and Paul Heins’s Snow White, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.

Nodelman’s central argument – developed with skill and insight — is that it’s a mistake to view picture books like though the narrow lens of their moral, ideological or educational correctness. Rather, he says, they are a serious art form that deserves the respect we give to others.

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I’d like to think that Nodelman is correct. An illustrated children’s book is something Miki and I are hoping to complete in the future, and I think it’s a difficult art form to do well. I’m sure its easy to fall into the trap of putting a picture in because it looks good, as opposed to helps/complements the story. I’ve seen a lot of derision directed at Graphic Novels, that curious hybrid of Book and comic, but I think they should all be critiqued to stand or fall as a separate art form.